paid-ads

Trigger phrases

Phrases that activate this skill when typed to Claude Code:

• PPC
• paid media
• ROAS
• ad campaign
• should I run ads

What it does

paid-ads is a Claude Code skill from Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. It turns Claude into a performance marketer who handles campaign strategy, audience targeting, bidding, budget allocation, and the per-platform quirks that quietly burn cash. The skill activates when you mention “PPC”, “paid media”, “ROAS”, “ad campaign”, or “should I run ads”.

The output of a session is a campaign plan: platform recommendation with rationale, account structure (campaigns / ad groups), audience definitions, bid strategy, daily budget allocation, and the kill criteria — when to pause, when to scale, what ROAS or CPA threshold disqualifies a campaign.

When to use it

Reach for it when:

• You’re spinning up paid for the first time and don’t want a $5K education in account structure
• An existing campaign is bleeding money and you need a structured optimization pass
• You’re choosing between Google, Meta, and LinkedIn and need a decision, not “all three”

When not to reach for it:

• You don’t have product-market fit yet — paid acquisition without retention is incinerator
• You need ad copy specifically — that’s ad-creative, this is strategy

Install

The skill is distributed via Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. Install via the repo’s recommended path — copy the paid-ads SKILL.md into your project’s .claude/skills/paid-ads/ directory, or use the repo’s plugin install if you’ve set it up.

Once installed, the skill activates on the trigger phrases above. The first time it runs, it will check for .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md) — populating that file with your product context first dramatically improves output quality across all of Haines’s marketing skills.

What a session looks like

A typical session has three phases:

1. Platform + budget fit. Which platform’s intent model matches your buyer (Google search for high-intent, Meta for discovery, LinkedIn for B2B targeting), and what minimum budget makes the platform statistically meaningful.
2. Account structure. Campaign and ad-group taxonomy, audience definitions, exclusions, conversion tracking setup, bid strategy (manual / Maximize / tROAS / tCPA).
3. Optimization rhythm. Weekly review checklist, kill criteria, scaling rules, the “underperforming creative” definition with a real impression threshold.

The discipline that makes it work: kill criteria before launch. Most paid spend is wasted because nobody wrote down “this is the number that means we stop”.

Receipts

Honest reporting on what paid-ads produces and where it has limits:

Where it works well:

• Forces budget reality — the skill won’t pretend $300/month on Meta will produce signal
• Account structure recommendations prevent the messy-account problem that calcifies into permanent waste
• Kill criteria up front saves the “let’s give it another month” trap

Where it backfires:

• Without account access it can’t see the actual data; the plan is hypothesis-based until you run it
• Platform UIs and bid strategies shift fast; tactical recommendations need verification against current docs

Pattern that works: start with one platform that matches your funnel, not three. Multi-platform scaling is a phase-two move, not a launch strategy.

Source and attribution

Originally written by Corey Haines. The canonical SKILL.md and any supporting files live in the paid-ads folder of his marketing-skills repository.

License: MIT. You can install, adapt, and redistribute the skill, with attribution preserved.

This page documents the skill from a practitioner’s perspective. For the formal spec and any updates, defer to the source repo.